My Project Du Jour: GetaFirstLife.com — Hey you, get a first life, eh? — First off, I am not a Second Life hater. Let me say that again: I am not a Second Life hater. I'm on record as saying that there's something important going on inside the game.

Google plots e-books coup — GOOGLE and some of the world's top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple's iPod has done for music. — The internet search giant is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers …

The Big Picture — A review of Dreaming in Code, by Scott Rosenberg. — Eyes work using a page fault mechanism. They're so good at it that you don't even notice. — You can only see at a high-resolution in a fairly small area, and even that has a big fat blind spot right exactly in the middle …

Wize.com, the search engine that ranks products — Wize.com, a San Mateo start-up, has launched yet another search engine for consumer electronics and other goods. — Wize's promise hangs on a single, skinny thread: Its "Wize Rank" concept. Wize Rank is a numeric ranking of products (from zero to 100).

Nimbus gets Rs 550-cr foreign feed — MUMBAI: A clutch of foreign investors including 3i, Cisco and Oman International Fund (OIF) have invested Rs 552 crore in Nimbus Communications in what could be one of the largest-ever private equity investments in the Indian media and entertainment sector.

An Insurance Policy for Low Airfares — FARECAST, the Internet start-up that made waves last year by predicting ticket prices for air travelers, is putting its money where its mouth is. — Sort of. — The company planned on Monday to announce Fare Guard, a service that guarantees …

Big Labels Offer Free Music to College Students — In one more attempt to counter music piracy, major music labels have agreed to support a service that will offer free music downloads — with some substantial restrictions — to any college student. — The service, from Ruckus Network …

Office 2007: From bloated to sleek — Life has a funny symmetry, don't you think? When you're born, you're short, toothless and bald. You spend the first part of your life gaining height, teeth and hair—and the last part losing them again. — Believe it or not, Microsoft Office is following the same trajectory.

LG Super Multi Blue Player: Order Now — We just got tipped off that Best Buy now has the LG Blu-ray HD-DVD Combo Player available for order online. Brian Lam, being the investigative journalist that he is, insisted on [ordering one for himself] testing the link before we reported this exciting news to the world.

What B-Schoolers Lust For Now — These days, private equity is the No. 1 object of desire. But jobs are scarce — Every decade, another faddish career opportunity dazzles the nation's business schools. In the 1980s, MBAs dreamed of Wall Street fortunes, swaggering their way into penthouses and private planes.

Campaigns are Conversations — Hillary Clinton formally announced her entry into the 2008 Presidential race today. And like Tom Vilsack, Senator Clinton appears to have spent some time with the Cluetrain Manifesto ("markets are conversations"). — The tagline "Let the Conversation Begin" …

The Social Media Release is about getting the facts right — So Stowe Boyd in his infinite wisdom decided to attack the idea of the Social Media Release, in a one sided telling of our conversation at Third Thursday earlier this week. Rather than take into account anything that anyone else …